Steelers Beat Eagles 16-14 On Game-Ending Field Goal

It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it wasn’t even the kind of pretty that you tell someone just to be nice. It was quite ugly but that doesn’t matter because it was a win and the Steelers desperately needed one. Ironic that it should come against an Eagles team that has won all three of its’ games in ugly fashion to boot.

The 16-14 win was marred by a first half full of penalties against the Steelers especially on offense. Two holding calls against Willie Colon (who add a third in the second half), an illegal formation call against Mike Wallace that wiped out a big run by Rashard Mendenhall and few other ticky-tack fouls all amounted to a sloppy first 30 minutes by amazingly the Steelers led 10-0 at the break.

The touchdown was scored on a swing pass to Rashard Mednenhall who scampered 10 yards for the TD. It would be ruled a rushing attempt as it was caught behind the line. Shaun Suisham would add the first of his three field goals as the half wore down.

The second half featured a Philly touchdown (scored by LeSean McCoy) drive helped immensely by two personal foul calls against the Steelers. One against Ryan Clark and the other against Ryan Mundy who could be looking at a suspension for his second one in as many games. The calls were questionable and that’s all I’ll say for now.

With the offense unable to get anything going, Philly got the ball back and converted two fourth and short opportunities as part of a 17-play drive dominated by McCoy and ending with a two-yard TD toss from Michael Vick to Brent Celek for the 14-13 lead.

The Steelers got the ball back and immediately put themselves in a hole with Colon’s third holding penalty. Ben Roethlisberger was ablse to complete a long third down pass to Antonio Brown to keep the drive alive. Eventually, the Steelers got into Eagles territory on another great pass and catch between Roethlisberger and Mendenhall. The Steelers forced the Eagles to burn their final time out as they got into field goal range where Suisham delivered from 34 yards out for the victory.

NOTES:

Steelers’ safety Troy Polamalu left the game in the first quarter with a recurrence of the calf strain that kept him out the last two games.

Linebacker LaMarr Woodley left in the first half with a hamstring injury.

The Steelers rushed for 136 yards on 31 carries with Mendenhall getting 81 of those on 14 attempts.

The regular officials may be back but there is still a lot to bitch about. The subjectivity of pass interference continues to be a problem as calls went against the Steelers yet the same type of behavior drew no flags against the Eagels.

Maybe it just me but Mike Wallace looked like he would have rather been anywhere else but Heinz Field today. He had several balls hit him in the hands and on a fouth down attempt, made no attempt to get the ball in the end zone.

The Steelers move to 2-2 on the season while the Bengals fall to 3-2, the Ravens move to 4-1 and Cleveland goes to 0-5.

Pittsburgh turns around quickly and travels to Tennessee for Thursday night football.